


Pet Names

by FeralCreed



Series: Losers Bingo 2019/2020 [3]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22858714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeralCreed/pseuds/FeralCreed
Summary: I couldn't think of anything for pet names for people/relationships and then I was like “damn what if they're being way too into naming this stray puppy they found and it's like a whole Thing for the team” and here it is ladies and gentlemen. I kinda picture it as a Shetland Sheepdog looking puppy.
Series: Losers Bingo 2019/2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640743
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14
Collections: Losers Bingo 2019/20





	Pet Names

“Why,” Clay says, sounding like he's very close to sighing, “is this thing in our house?” 

“Aw, c'mon, Colonel,” Jensen replies. “You can't be mad about a puppy.” 

“He ain't mad about the dog, he just knows better than to let you keep it,” Roque interjects. Pooch nods along from where he's standing eating chips and Jensen makes an insulted face. 

“I at least thought _Pooch_ would be on my side! Name solidarity!” 

“I'm going to graciously forget you ever said that,” Pooch tells him. “The dog's cute, J, but we all know you're not going to take care of it. You don't even take care of yourself. We all know how many times Cougar has to remind you to eat on a daily basis, it would just be mean to have something relying on you to keep it alive. Or to ask Cougar.” 

Cougar, for his part, simply shakes his head. He wouldn't mind taking care of the little thing. But the others have a point in saying that Jensen should be the one to keep care of it if he's the one who most wants to keep it. And as much as Jensen is a tech genius, Cougar's pretty sure he would have died by now if he was left to his own devices for so long. Either from forgetting to eat or from drinking an entire case of Red Bull in one sitting and his heart giving out. The dog would, hopefully, end up somewhat smarter than that, but it's not something he really wants to experiment with. So... 

“It can stay the night and then we'll take it to a shelter. There has to be one close by,” Clay says. 

“No,” Cougar says. He half wonders what he's getting himself into, but it's too late to back out, so he simply continues. “My dog. I'll care for him.” 

Jensen looks like it's Christmas. Clay looks like he's aging very quickly. Roque and Pooch, for their parts, are wise enough to stay quiet, though Cougar can tell that they're now interested. Cougar steps down from where he's been perched on the windowsill and crosses the living room to take the puppy out of Jensen's arms. It's a hyper little thing, with long grey and white fur, squirming around to eagerly lick at his chin and cheeks until he shifts his hold to keep his face out of its reach. 

“Since when have you wanted a dog?” Clay asks, narrowing his eyes. 

“Since this one,” Cougar says with a little shrug. 

“What are you gonna call it?” Roque doesn't seem to care much about whatever suspicions Clay has, or how delighted Jensen looks. Cougar can't really fault him for that. 

That doesn't mean that he has any idea what the puppy's name should be. He shrugs and looks down at it. It tries to bite the brim of his hat. He sighs and leans back. Is 'hyperactive pain in my ass' too long for a dog's name? Probably. And for all he knows, the dog will grow up into a much calmer animal. Maybe it's just worked up from being caught and brought into a house full of strangers and new smells. 

“Dog,” he says. Simple and succinct. 

“Oh, come on, you can't do that, he needs a real name,” Jensen protests. 

“Yeah, I'm with J on this one,” Pooch agrees. 

“What's wrong with naming a dog 'Dog'?” Clay asks, looking puzzled. “It's simple.” 

“It's like naming a kid 'Human',” Pooch explains. 

“I mean, we call you Pooch,” Jensen begins, and then wisely decides to shut up at the look Pooch gives him. 

“Hijo de perra,” Cougar says then, and sighs when nobody gets it. 

“Nightcrawler!” Jensen has evidently recovered from the idea of discussing Pooch's name and is again focusing on naming the dog. “Because I found him at night. And it's a hero's name.” 

“Is that one of those guys that runs around with Batman?” Roque asks, confused. Jensen squawks in protest. 

“I think it would be a little weird for a squad of soldiers to name their dog after a comic book hero,” Clay tells him. 

“Okay, but you know who I'm talking about, right? Because you said 'comic book', and yeah, he was in the movies already, because, well, the X-Men movies are pretty popular and it wouldn't surprise me if you saw them, but he has a much better developed history in the comics,” Jensen explains. “You know about him and Mystique?” 

“I just know that you're a nerd, Jensen, so of course it's a comic book character.” 

Cougar decides to stick with 'dog' for now, not that he tells the others that. Jensen is staunchly defending Nightcrawler by explaining more and more complicated comic arcs. Roque is set on Buck, after the brand of knife. Pooch, of all people, is the one who suggests calling the dog Greystoke after the main character in the Tarzan books. Cougar hadn't known there were books. Clay, for his part, has given in to the idea of keeping the dog, and is throwing out random human names such as Kevin, Bill, and Daniel. 

“Have you even checked to see if it's a boy?” Roque asks, and the others abruptly fall silent. Cougar realizes that no, they haven't. Jensen had walked in with the dog, announced his intention to keep it, and Clay had tried to shut it down then and there. It would serve them all right if they'd gotten attached to their name suggestions only to find out that the dog is female. Which, he realizes a minute later, is exactly what's happened. 

“'Dog' is a unisex name,” he points out. That ends the silence, because there is evidently something gravely wrong with the idea of naming the dog after what it is, and the team is determined to save it from that fate. Though he can't really think of the dog as an it any more, he thinks, since they know now. 

Dog, for her part, doesn't seem to care much about what she's going to be called. She's all but fallen asleep in Cougar's arms, her paws sticking out in four different directions and her face pressed against his chest. It doesn't look very comfortable. But he's learned from Jensen how someone can fall asleep in the most awkward positions if they're tired enough, so he decides not to comment, or do anything that might wake her up. Instead he stands in the middle of the living room and listens to four grown men argue over what to call a puppy. 

It's unexpectedly entertaining. 

He thinks about sitting down to watch some old Western on the tv but decides that it's probably better to see if Dog needs a drink instead. She wakes up when he starts moving and nearly scrambles right out of his arms before he tightens his grip enough to start her. That gets her licking at his chin again, and he decides to just let her do it as he carries her into the kitchen. She tries to wriggle out of his arms to stand on the countertop but he just holds her under his arm while he gets a bowl out of the cabinet and fills it with water. 

She drinks most of it before wandering away to sniff under the dishwasher. Cougar picks her up before she can think about peeing on the floor and carries her out into the backyard. At least it's already fenced in. The wooden boards are a little old, but they aren't going to rot any time soon, and he won't have to worry about her running away or getting out. Unless she turns into the kind of dog who digs. There's training to keep them from doing that, isn't there? He's never had a dog so he doesn't know. 

He sits down on the top step leading down from the back door and lets her run around the yard chasing after whatever interests her. The conversation in the living room has only grown more lively – Clay and Jensen are arguing over whether or not it's weird to name a grey dog Orange, and he doesn't really want to know where the suggestion came from. From the sounds of things, Pooch is just laughing and refuses to take either of their sides. Dog relieves herself in the grass and Cougar whistles to catch her attention before standing up. 

She doesn't seem to know what to do with the steps, standing at the bottom and looking up at him with a forlorn look, so he goes to pick her up and carry her inside. She seems happy with that. Once they're back in, she scampers around his feet with no regard for the possibility of him stepping on her, and he finds himself hoping she'll outgrow it by the time he's across the kitchen. Fortunately seeing the others distracts her, and she takes off to pounce on Roque's feet. She falls over before she gets there and the conversation is derailed into fussing over her to make sure she's okay. He glances over at Pooch. 

“At this point, I'm voting for calling her Dog just so they'll shut up,” Pooch says. He gets an insulted look from Jensen and shrugs. “Y'all been bitching about the dog's name for so long that the movie's rolling credits already.” 

Clay swears and Cougar snorts a laugh. Who would have known that deciding to bring a little stray into their family would be such a polarizing topic? Roque shuts the tv off and stretches. 

“Name it something pretentious,'” he suggests. “That'll really drive Jensen nuts.” 

“We're not revenge naming the puppy,” Pooch objects. “That's just mean. And she's way too cute to be named something weird.” 

“Name her after Michelle Pfeiffer,” Clay says. 

“That's weird,” Pooch tells him. He gets a glare. 

“Something fancy and elegant would be cute, though,” Jensen says thoughtfully, seemingly unaware of Clay's and Pooch's disagreement. He wiggles his fingers and Dog valiantly tries to attack them. She misses but it doesn't dissuade her from trying again. 

Cougar wonders if he'll be overruled in naming his own dog if he continues to call her Dog. It's looking likely. Roque has sided with Clay on the Michelle Pfeiffer issue but he can say with certainty that he's not naming his dog after a person. Which also rules out Jensen's Nightcrawler idea, though he thinks that was dropped when they realized that Dog was female rather than male. You can never quite tell with Jensen. The possibilities of him suggesting another comic book name are quite strong. 

“No people names,” he says, to head off whatever weird directions their ideas might go in the future. “Real people or not.” 

“That's not fair,” Jensen protests. Cougar raises an eyebrow. Jensen shuts up. 

“All right, well, what would you name her?” Clay asks. 

“Dog,” Cougar says, giving him a flat look. They've been over this. His apparent inability to choose a proper name is what started this whole conversation. Which at this point has really been going on for far too long. 

“Besides that,” Roque clarifies. “What's your second choice?” 

Cougar looks over at Dog. She's sleeping now, with her head on Jensen's sneaker. It's adorable, frankly, even if he's still not totally sure why he agreed to keep her. No using people names or colors, no calling her what she is... He mentally flips through a few names in his head but none of them seem to fit. Oh. He likes that one. 

“Princess,” he decides. He gets a few blank looks as the other Losers are clearly trying to figure out why he chose that. He shrugs, and says, “None of you had any better ideas. I heard them.” 

That gets a laugh out of Pooch and Jensen. Clay nods in agreement and Roque simply shrugs. It looks like they're all okay with his new name idea. Of course, they could have all just gone along with calling her Dog and skipped this whole dramafest over Michelle Pfeiffer and Nightcrawler and Buck knives, but he has to admit, he can't remember the last time the Losers took the easy way out of anything. Even naming a dog. He still doesn't know how it took them the better part of twenty minutes, though. 

“There will be no bitching about names after this,” he tells them, and goes to pick up Princess. Jensen makes a soft disappointed noise and Cougar sighs under his breath. “You'll see her tomorrow.” 

“Yeah, I know, but she's so cute, Cougs, I mean, really. Just look at her. You can't blame me for wanting to hang out with her.” 

“She's asleep,” Pooch points out. “I'm sure Cougar will let you babysit her when he has to go do other stuff. You can play fetch with her or something.” 

Cougar nods and Jensen looks excited again. Cougar takes Princess upstairs to put her in the second bathroom. A couple towels are folded up at one end of the bathtub and he folds the shower curtain up over the rod to keep it far out of her reach. There's no way she's housetrained and it will be a lot easier to clean up after her if it's all contained in the tub. While he's never had a puppy, he knows that they're prone to peeing inside when they're this young. 

“I still think that Nightcrawler is a viable option,” Jensen whispers from the doorway. Cougar nearly jumps. He ignores the other man, because he's not naming his dog after a comic book character, or any of the other insane ideas that his teammates had. What would a name like that even look like?

* * *

“Princess Michelle Kershaw Nightcrawler Greystoke?” the receptionist repeats. She looks at him like he's a lunatic and Cougar can't help but sigh. 

“The name was a team effort.” 

One that he still thinks is ridiculous. But the name argument had started again the morning after Princess had been adopted into their family, and Cougar, who had foreseen this becoming a headache for many days, had made a decision. Each of the Losers was allowed to suggest one name, and they would all be melded together into one long name. Jensen had gleefully said something about it being just like a Voltron. He still wasn't sure what a Voltron was, but he wasn't surprised to see Jensen's suggestion. 

“Oh, you let your children all name her, how sweet,” the receptionist gushes. 

Cougar nearly laughs. No, that's not what happened. But it's close. So he just nods and asks if their appointment will be on time. She says it will be. Princess – it's the only thing he'll call her, despite her 'official' name – is just over a year old now. Never had any health problems, but he wants to get her a yearly checkup anyway, just to be safe. 

“I'll tell the children you liked the name,” he says, a smile tugging at his mouth, and goes to sit down to wait for the veterinarian to call them in.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who are curious, 'hijo de perra' means 'son of a bitch' in Spanish, but is literally translated as 'son of a female dog'. It's a dumb pun.


End file.
